Identifying the right keyword

How important is to analyze the competitive site's keywords

[michael]

Greetings to all,

We all know, doing research & identifyng the right keywords to be optimised for a website is one of the most crucial things for an SEO service.

What I believe & have been practicing is:
List down the services of the client & make list of the keywords deriving from it.
Analyze the popularity of those keywords i.e. if searchers are actually using them too.
Analyze the competition of the site i.e. if it's feasible for us to achieve rankings for them &
Making the final list of keywords.

Now, here I have a client, who says that he wants to know - what is it that their competition is getting ranked for and then how are they getting to the top with those keywords?

Now the question, which arises for me is:
1) Do we actually need to analyze the competition's website for choosing keywords for our site?
2) How can we know, which are the keywords, which the competition is getting top ranked for.
3) One method would be to list all their services, see their metas/ page titles & check rankings for each of the keywords in different Search Engines. But, is there any shortcut to this long procedure, as the number of competitive sites and the services offered are many?

Though, I too find the client's query justifiable, but still not fully convinced with it.
Is there any Industry Standard for SEO service, in identifying a keyword for a website?

You views on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Brett_Tabke]

Welcome to the board. I would skip the meta tags altogether as they are untrust worthy. Those are just the keywords that most sites "wish" they ranked under.

Instead, use a keyword density analyzer to see what the top keywords are on any given page.

[michael]

Thanks Brett,

If you could also tell me,
If I need to take this path at all, of analyzing the competition!

[digitalghost]

You need to analyze the competition, but not their metas. Study the competition that ranks well and discern why they are in the top ten. You don't need to study ALL your competitor sites, but you need an understanding of why the top sites rank well. The reason they rank well isn't always readily apparent and that is when you need to roll up your sleeves and find out why.

Sometimes it is readily apparent why a site ranks well and those techniques that work are easily emulated. Personally, I can't imagine optimizing a site without taking a good look at the competition.

For sites that rank well, you'll notice an amazing concentration of keywords in the right places or a large number of inbound links with the phrase in anchors.

I agree with Brett on the meta tag analysis, it's a waste of time. Check density and look at titles, headers and anchors.

DG

[WebGuerrilla]

Now, here I have a client, who says that he wants to know - what is it that their competition is getting ranked for and then how are they getting to the top with those keywords?

IMHO, the situation you've described is where 90% of all SEO goes bad. And it is one of the hardest things to overcome from a client management perspective.

Competitive analysis is exremely important, but the key idea you want to get across to your client is the fact that your competitors do not define your keywords, your keywords define your competitors.

With all the keyword research tools available today, it's very easy to get a good picture of human search behavior. Collecting and analyzing that data will allow you to come up with a set of related terms that has the potential of producing the greatest possible visibility for your client.

Any competitive analysis you do needs to focus on the sites that are the most visible for your chosen keyword set. The issue the client always struggles with is the fact that quite often, the companies that they compete with on a daily based in the offline world, do not operate the sites that are the most visible for the terms being used by a potential clients/customers.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've done work for a company that followed the strategy of determing what keywords to go after by looking at their known competitor's site. In some cases, I've seen situations where an entire industry were all chasing terms no one ever searches for.

In the end, I've always found that the best approach is to be firm and stand my ground on the issue. If I keep repeating the concept that their competitor isn't necessarily my competitor, they eventually get it.

[michael]

WebGuerrilla, You have made my day !!

This is exactly what I have tried to explain to the client.

I had given my client a list of competition websites, which were getting top ranked for services/ keywords offered by him & as digital host mentioned, I had also analyzed as to how are they getting on the top.

But my problem was, the client was insisting on finding the keywords on which his offline competition came on the top and then how are they coming up.

Thanks again